Enterprise networks are carrying a very fast growing volume of both business and non-business critical traffic. For example, traffic generated by a video conferencing application may be much less tolerant of network delays, jitter, etc. than non-critical traffic, such as simple webpage traffic. This complicates the task of optimizing network performance for specific applications, as many applications use the same protocols, thus making it difficult to distinguish and select traffic flows for optimization.
Access networks often have insufficient bandwidth or other characteristics that prevent some applications from functioning as well as desired. Although the quality of wireless and wired access networks continues to improve, those access networks are often constrained for various reasons. Consequently, it is often quite difficult for a subscriber in an access network to determine if there is sufficient bandwidth to perform high throughput/bandwidth exchanges over an extended amount of time (e.g., data backup/restore operations, large file downloads, interactive audio/video, streaming video etc.). Even if the network can initially accommodate the traffic requirements, the throughput will often drop off over longer periods of time, resulting in loss of connectivity or extremely slow data download/upload times which may impinge on the user experience.